Design
by Ersatz Einstein
Summary: Warlock, as yet an infant and the presumed Antichrist, begins to benefit from his two immortal guardians.


The Antichrist is a figure of terror. From his earliest of days, the Prince of Darkness is a being of despair, destined to rule over the darkest of all days, the end of time: Armageddon. He is, if not precisely the Prince of Lies, at least very, very close. His very person is invested with the power, dignity, and fear that ordinarily comes only with an accidental confrontation with an aggressive and vindictive upper manager. He is the scythe rending every human soul to shreds, the pain that comes with the end of hope…

What he most certainly is _not _is the sort of baby that should be housed in a pink nursery.

"I really don't see what's so wrong with it," mused Aziraphale. "After all, we don't exactly _want _him to be pure evil, now do we?"

"Well… no, but – but I – " Crowley sputtered. He paused for a moment to regain his composure and summon a coherent thought. "It's just _wrong, _is all! You're an angel; you wouldn't understand."

"I understand quite well, Anthony J. Crowley, and I'm not sure that I approve of your implication." There was the faintest flicker of a forked tongue, and a pair of dark sunglasses felt the brief but smug sensation of turning flame red, but aside from that, Crowley didn't react. "Are you saying that I don't understand what it is to be, as the kids put it, 'cool'?"

"I don't think that you'd know cool if it put on a tartan negligée and punched you in the face." Taking advantage of his adversary's temporary stunned silence, he added, "I assure you, this isn't even _remotely _cool. For the love of Satan, it's pink!"

"I happen to think that, while it's a bit much – "

"Ah, so you admit it!"

"I admit nothing. I simply think that the cherubs, and the frills, and the little clouds, and the – oh my, is that _lace? _– tend to be a bit… overbearing. The attaché should really have had a second opinion on the room."

"Then you don't mind if I change it a little?"

"It's still his decision."

"But I'd be a second opinion!"

"No, you'd be the _only _opinion. It's the same way with your music. No matter what I'd like to listen to, you always turn on that infernal – that infernal… what do they call it, exactly?"

"_They _call it rock and roll, but you call it – "

"Ah, yes: be-bop!"

"They don't – you know what, never mind. It doesn't matter what they call it, or whether pink is cool or not, because you have no say in what I play in the Bentley and this nursery will _not_ be pink." He tapped the irrationally frilly crib with his finger, and moments later, the entire nursery changed from a pale, delicate pink to –

… nothing. It was _still _pink. Crowley didn't even pause before whirling around to glower at the angel.

"What are you doing?"

"Thwarting you."

"What? Why?"

Aziraphale smiled in a way that would on any other face have constituted a smirk. As it was, the expression had something of the parental twinkle invariably accompanying the words "This is going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me".

"First of all, I believe it's my job. In fact, I believe that my role in thwarting you, _particularly _regarding the demonic character of young Warlock's upbringing, was the entire premise for the current arrangement. Secondly, it's the attaché's – or rather, his wife, Angelica's – right to choose whatever color they want for their nursery. Finally, I don't think that it's really as bad as all that. It's _certainly _not bad enough to warrant whatever you were planning to do to it."

Crowley began to irritably drum his fingers on the painfully cherubic crib. "I was only going to make the décor a little less pathetic. He's supposed to be neutral, after all, which means neither of us should like it, or that if one of us likes it, the other should do something else."

"Well… I suppose that that makes sense. How about this: you can rearrange half of the nursery however you'd like it, and the other half will remain as is."

"You _can't _be telling me that you like this… this…" For lack of a better way to articulate his disdain, he threw his arms out as if to embrace, or perhaps repel, the vast expanse of rosy pinkness and fluffy decoration.

"Not exactly, but we need to – "

"' – respect their wishes,' I know. You aren't telling me that you _might _be able to do better?"

"Of course I _could, _but it wouldn't be right."

"And letting little Warlock grow up surrounded by _this _would be?"

"Well… maybe I could adjust a couple of things. Not anything important," he hastily added. "Just a few touches here and there to make it a bit more palatable."

"Of course. Makes perfect sense to me."

"Oh, it 'makes perfect sense' to you, does it? Perhaps I will do something more extensive!" He folded his arms decisively.

"Fine." Crowley shrugged. "Whatever you want."

"Fine, then. I'll just… do that, then."

**…**

The nanny's first reaction upon entering was that there was something off about the room. It was as though the left half and the right half had been designed by a pair of particularly territorial divorcés. The one side was covered with tartan, a variety of plump (although not particularly attractive) pillows, and some sort of half-mobile of ducks and squirrels; the other was simply a deep, jet black that seemed to absorb the light. Neither half was even remotely pink.

At first, this all struck her as rather odd, but as the attaché and his wife seemed fine with it, and as she became increasingly convinced that it had always been that way, she ignored it in her work.

So easily did she overlook the change that she missed the tiny scrap of pink wallpaper that had escaped into the trash, its tattered appearance suggesting a malice that demanded manual removal.


End file.
